Coach Stinson is also working very closely with another website called CaptainU, which is very similar to NCSA. CaptainU is an off brand NCSA. The only difference between the two companies is that NCSA has more support behind it. This means that it has more people who can call and work with student athletes on the phone and really help grow those students’ profiles.
The idea of UMPI getting a school football team started getting kicked around last fall before COVID hit and took the world by storm. The UMPI baseball team members would always go out and play snow football at least once a week–maybe more, depending on how their bodies were feeling. “It also depended on whether the baseball boys had practice that day because we didn’t want to tire ourselves out,” Payton Jones, an UMPI baseball player, said.
News that the boys were playing snow football games on the soccer field started to get around. People started showing up to come and watch the games and cheer on their favorite players. By the time the last game came around for the little snow football league the baseball team had put together, there were at least 50 people there watching the games. Among two of these 50 people in the stands that day were Coach Roger Stinson and President Ray Rice. After a big tackle on the field and after listening to the roar of the crowd, Coach Stinson and President Rice made eye contact with each other.
President Rice said to Coach, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Stinson said, “Definitely!” After that night of football came to an end, the plotting began for hatching an UMPI football team. Now the season starts the first Sunday we return to campus for the fall semester. The only question left to ask is, Are you ready?
